The collection and disposal of plumbing waste, and required venting associated with such waste collection is well established in the building construction art.
In high rise, multi-storied, dwelling structures it is established practice to substantially duplicate floor plumbing layouts in each story of the structure. The waste pipes from various plumbing appliances such as toilet, bathroom or lavatory, bathtub, kitchen sink, and the like, are than arranged to discharge or empty into a common waste stack, in the form of a large diameter pipe, which runs the entire height of the structure leading to ultimate disposal means at the bottom of the waste stack. Venting is required to be effected in connection with accumulating and discharging the plumbing waste, and again it is common practice to tie or pipe the vents into a common vent stack which runs the entire height of the structure, leading to a vent opening at the top of the vent stack.
In certain communities, construction codes provide specific requirements dealing with handling of waste or venting or both. Thus, in Chicago for example, the construction code requires three separate vent, or stack openings to meet requirement of separate vents for three major plumbing fixtures, toilets, tubs and lavatories.
In the installation of the plumbing network in a high rise apartment building or the like, if each plumbing fixture has to be individually tied or piped into a standard waste stack or vent stack, much individual fitting is required, greatly increasing the total plumbing labor cost for an installation.
At the same time, there frequently exist variations in piping layouts, either because of selective variant arrangements of plumbing fixtures within a bathroom or because of some other difficulty that might arise in connection with field installation. The latter problems substantially eliminate the ability to completely pre-cut, or sub-assemble piping configurations, so that substantial field work is always required. As an example, in connecting sections of the stacks between floors, it is typical that the upper end of one stack fitting section has to be connected with the lower end of the stack fitting section of the floor above. If there is required different makeup lengths between each two fittings to be connected, one cannot pre-cut the stack sections in the precise amount and previous practice where such problems arise have required the use of a "Sissom" joint which is expensive.
Thus, one object of this invention is to provide fittings which substantially avoid the aforesaid problems, and the usage of which substantially reduces overall total cost of labor required to effect plumbing stack connections in the field.
Another object is to provide improved waste-collecting, and venting manifolds for use in effecting the necessary plumbing fixture connections to waste stacks and to vent stacks.
A further object of this invention is to provide plumbing manifold constructions which promote economy and efficiency of connection to pipe sections that normally feed into a waste stack.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent to one skilled in the art as the description of the invention herein proceeds. DESCRIPTION OF PRIOR ART
As will be described herein, it has heretofore been known to provide a venting manifold consisting of a plurality of parallel vent pipes each of different length joined to a single tubular section that is open and threaded at both ends to receive and connect to other vent pipe sections. The vent pipes of such a manifold were required to be of different length to accommodate their respective connection to other vent pipes.